The Department of Energy and Power Systems organized a three-day educational excursion for the final year graduate students from May 21 to 23. The students participated in the MIPRO conference held in Opatija where they learned more about multiple European projects conducted by our Department, including ATTEST and FLEXIGRID. The students were given a glimpse into the professional life waiting for them after graduation. After the conference, they visited hydropower plant Senj where they had a chance to experience a real-life working environment and challenges in the everyday operation of a Croatian power plant.

We wish our students all the best in their professional careers and are proud of their enthusiasm and interest in power systems!

We are deligthed to announce that FER, lead by the team from our department, is starting a new project! 💡📃

This time, it is not the typical one, but infrastrucured – we are starting a construction of a new 600 kW solar power plant 🌞 and a battery storage 🔋 unit to support it. With this new system our total capacities will be increased up to 700 kW of PV on the AC side and over 300 kWh of storage in batteries, covering a bit over 50% of total faculties electricity needs and reducing our carbon footprint by 109 tons annually. It also opens up other possibilities and brings additional benefits: not only will we be promoting large integration of renewables, but our students will have the opportunity to be part of FER's living lab, learn, research and develop new ideas based on data collected from the system. 🔍

We believe this is the first of many good news and projects to come in fulfilling our long term goal of carbon neutrality and energy efficiency. ⚡ ☘

Project is financed by Island, Lichestein and Norway through European economy space 2014. – 2021. with national cofunding of Republic of Croatia in the amount of 690.000 € from the program Energy and Climate Change.

FER is the sole partner in the project and the total value of the project is 815.000€.
 
More info at: www.eeagrants.hr

Congratulations to our Professor Igor Kuzle for another international recognition! 🎊

Professor was first opponent in the defense of the PhD thesis of Erick Fernando Alves, who defended his thesis entitled "Optimization of Energy Storage for Frequency Control in Autonomous AC Power Systems" on May 15, 2023 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. Second opponent was Senior Lecturer Dr. Fei Teng from Imperial College London. The defense was led by Professor Karen Byskov Lindberg. Supervisors were Professor Elisabetta Tedeschi and Professor Magnus Korpas.

Thanks to the great efforts of Professor Igor Kuzle, our Department won the organization of another flagship IEEE PES conference. 🙌

We are extremely honored to announce that the 14th IEEE Power and Energy Society Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference Europe (IEEE ISGT -Europe) will be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia in October 2024. The conference addresses powergrid modernization and the applications for a wide use of information and communication technologies for more intelligent operation of electric power systems and integration of renewable and distributed energy resources.

A large number of our Department members will be involved in the organization:

Professor Igor Kuzle - General Chair
Assistant professor Ninoslav Holjevac - Co-chair
Professor Hrvoje Pandzic - Technical Program Chair
Tomislav Baškarad, PhD - Local Organizing Committee Chair
Matija Zidar, PhD- Finance Chair
Assistant Professor Mirna Gržanić - the Publicity Chair
Assistant professor Mateo Beus - Industry Vice-Chair
Assistant professor Goran Grdenić - Publications Chair
Paulina Duckic, PhD - Conference Secretary
Matej Krpan, m.eng. - Web Coordinator

We are looking forward to seeing you in Dubrovnik next year in October.

The RES Data #team is finalizing their three and half years of intensive research and development project these days. On Friday, May 19, they organized a workshop, opened for public, where they presented all the results of the project: from ML driven tools for forecasting operational aspects of the power system (wind, solar, losses, markets etc.) to data analytics tools for power system maintenance, analysis and restoration (e.g. lightning nowcasting, DTR). They also made some recommendations on future developments and issues they encountered while creating the solutions to mitigate climate change and enhance integration of renewable energy.
 
As a follow up of the workshop RES data team organized a roundtable meeting, closed for public, gathering different stakeholders from the industry interested in developed tools but also in further improvements and applications which could reduce the impact of climate change and make the energy system zero carbon. The fruitful discussion brought several suggestions and ideas for future collaborations.

Big thank you to everyone who participated and made this project what it is 👏 🧠

Tomislav Capuder Franko Pandžić Bojan Franc Amalija Božiček Ivan Sudić HOPS Croatian Transmission System Operator Plc. PROFESSIO ENERGIA PLC Comping Veski Ltd Croatian Energy Market Operator (HROTE) Green Energy Pal KONČAR - Digital E.ON Hrvatska HEP-ODS AI Technologies d.o.o. Adnet Porzana

We are always honored when our alumni friends and collaborators from the industry come to FER and give an invited lecture in one of our classes. This year, once again, Ivan Franicevic from RASCO d.o.o. company gave his view on project management and risk management in the class with the same name. By skipping the “boring” theory this week, Ivan gave a practical insight into everyday challenges and issues they, as a innovation company, are facing daily, and offered his two cents on best ways to manage risk in different types of projects. Over 200 students had the opportunity to listen to his lecture and were almost unanimous in grading the lecture with the top mark. Thank you Ivan and we hope to host you again in the upcoming years!

Also big thank you to our Tomislav Capuder and Mirna Gržanić who made this possible.

On May 4, 2023, Karlo Šepetanc successfully defended his thesis titled "Convex polar second-order Taylor approximation of AC optimal power flows". The exceptional feature of the thesis is that it envelopes 4 JCR journal papers (3 Q1 and 1 Q2) and one conference paper which means that he completed his doctorate under the Scandinaviamodel. Special thanks to his supervisor professor Hrvoje Pandzic Pandžić and associate professor Domagoj Vlah who directly contributed to his research.
 
Members of his PhD committee were professor Tomislav Capuder (UNIZG-FER), Minea Skok (Filipec) (Energy Institute Hrvoje Požar) and professor Juan Miguel Morales González (Universidad de Málaga).